Inspiring

Question

keeping two version of Lightroom Classic....

Forum|Forum|7 months ago
November 10, 2025
3 replies
575 views

I need to do this since I have a project catalog I work in occasionally that needs to stay in sync with another computer that only works up to ver 14.0.1.

ChatGPT says it should ask if I want to keep an old version when updating but it did not. Adobe support says that's right no option is given and it will always remove an older version.

My idea is to change the CC program file location, then re-install the old version I want, then change the location back. Is that going to work or will Adobe still find a way to disable my current updated version? Adobe support says they don't know if that will work.

Windows 11.

Windows

B

balou06

Known Participant

@AxelMatt Hi, the message is in french and says :

Header : Impossible de mettre à niveau le catalogue (Impossible to upgrade catalog)
Details : and the catalog version is unknown (a tip to retrieve it ?) but the catalog was created in october 2025, I worked on it for a project and then left it as is since a few days ago trying to open it and migrate.
LR version was probably 15.0 or 14.5.2 as I do regular updates of software and missed regular updates of the catalogs … :-(

Regards, have fun with your images.Pascal

A

AxelMatt

Community Expert

@balou06 Try the following steps:

Test and Repair the Catalog
You can force Lightroom to check and attempt to repair the database.

Launch Lightroom while holding down the Alt (Windows) or Option (Mac) key .
When the Select Catalog dialog appears, highlight your problematic catalog .
Check the box that says "Test integrity of this catalog" and click Open .

Import the Old Catalog Into a Fresh One
If repairing fails, creating a new catalog often bypasses the corruption.

Open Lightroom and go to File > New Catalog.
In this blank catalog, go to File > Import > Import from Another Catalog....
Select your original, un-upgradable .lrcat file . Lightroom will rebuild a fresh, clean version of your database

Check if you’ve enough free disk space: Approx >100GB on the system drive is recommended.

My System: Intel i7-8700K - 64GB RAM - NVidia Geforce RTX 3060 - Windows 11 Pro 25H2 -- LR-Classic 15 - Photoshop 27 - Nik Collection 9 - PureRAW 6 - Topaz Photo AI

B

balou06

Known Participant

@balou06 Try the following steps:

Test and Repair the Catalog
You can force Lightroom to check and attempt to repair the database.

Launch Lightroom while holding down the Alt (Windows) or Option (Mac) key .
When the Select Catalog dialog appears, highlight your problematic catalog .
Check the box that says "Test integrity of this catalog" and click Open .

Import the Old Catalog Into a Fresh One
If repairing fails, creating a new catalog often bypasses the corruption.

Open Lightroom and go to File > New Catalog.
In this blank catalog, go to File > Import > Import from Another Catalog....
Select your original, un-upgradable .lrcat file . Lightroom will rebuild a fresh, clean version of your database

Check if you’ve enough free disk space: Approx >100GB on the system drive is recommended.

Just tried. Both of these tips require the catalog to be upgraded before opening or importing. I regularly check my catalogs integrity, I think this is an issue between LR 15.0 or older and latest version. Not a catalog corruption. I’ll try to open a case to see if the problem is known and has a solution. Crossing my fingers.

Regards, have fun with your images.Pascal

johnrellis

Legend

[This post contains formatting and embedded images that don't appear in email. View the post in your Web browser.]

For purposes of testing my plugins and filing LR bug reports, I regularly keep and run very many versions of LR Classic on both Mac and Windows. After I install a newly released version using the Creative Cloud desktop app, I immediately copy the application folder to an archive folder.

To run an old version, I exit the currently running LR, open the archived version's folder, and double-click "Adobe Lightroom Classic.app" (Mac) or "Lightroom.exe" (Win). If I'm switching major versions, then it will tell me that the most recently opened catalog isn't compatible or ask me to upgrade it, but usually I navigate to a saved catalog for that version.

I've been doing this for years.

johnrellis

Legend

I also have many Parallels virtual machines, but I only use those for running different virgin versions of operating systems and occasionally virgin installations of LR. For example, I currently have a virtual machine for Mac OS 26 I use for testing my plugins, since I'm not foolish enough to upgrade my production machine to Mac OS 26 before the 26.2 version comes out.

But usually, when I want to run an older version of LR, I start it up on my production Mac or Win machines.

bellevue scott

Inspiring

Hats off to you. That’s a lot of dedication to help people on the forums.

JohanElzenga

Community Expert

Yes, it is possible to have two versions of Lightroom Classic installed. There should be no side effects, but you need to be careful which version opens which catalog. I would advice to set in the preferences that Lightroom should ask. Both Lightroom versions will use the same preferences file however, so make sure they do not run at the same time.

Simply changing the location will probably not work, but what you can try is first install Lightroom Classic 14. Then make a copy of that version, rename the copy and zip it. Now upgrade to Lightroom Classic 15. After the upgrade is finished, unzip the Lightroom Classic 14 copy. If there is an update, then zip the Lightroom Classic 14 copy again before updating. One note: this works on a Mac, but I am not sure if it works on Windows with its registry stuff.

-- Johan W. Elzenga

D

dbur971Author

Inspiring

So how did you manage to get two versions installed if it automatically removes old versions without asking when you update?

I think I can handle the versions for each catalog by opening LR by clicking the catalog link rather than the app link. You can set the catalog link 'open with' path to make sure it always opens with the correct version of LR. This is how I managed different catalogs in the past, though not with different LR versions yet.

JohanElzenga

Community Expert

The install won't remove a zipped copy. I added some info to my original message that you may not have seen.

-- Johan W. Elzenga

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